CES Reporter’s Notebook: No-Shows Still Influence Gadget Event

Apple wasn’t part of the Consumer Electronics Show, but the convention floor was littered with accessories built for the iPhone and iPad.

By Ian Sherr and Don Clark

LAS VEGAS –America’s largest gadget expo may have lacked some sizzle this year, but it was still hard to avoid entirely.

Even companies without a formal presence at the Consumer Electronics Show in some cases had people roaming the aisles of the giant trade show. They also made their presence felt in other ways, in some cases with announcements that drew some focus from CES.

Apple Inc., which hasn’t exhibited at CES since 1992, for years announced some major products during the Macworld trade show held around the same time. In 2007, for example, it announced the original iPhone.

The company no longer participates in Macworld. But this year it announced during CES that downloads of apps for iPhones and iPads downloads had crossed the 40 billion mark, leading to $7 billion in payments to developers since 2008.

Apple is far from the only non-CES exhibitor who chose the week of the show to try to grab press attention Facebook Inc., for example, sent out invitations for an event it plans to hold next week.

Others that chose to take a low profile at CES were still quite noticeable.

Microsoft Corp., which this year gave up the opening keynote speech, sent its CEO Steve Ballmer for a surprise appearance along with other staff members who appeared at events and bumped into reporters.

Another was Research in Motion Ltd., which opted to eschew its booth presence and didn’t hold any flashy events. The company is gearing up on the upcoming release of BlackBerry 10, its latest software for smartphones, later this month.

But the BlackBerry brand was far from absent. Organizers and companies at each booth relied on the once popular smartphone with an attached scanner to keep track of attendees who visited their booths. Even event staff members who handed out initial welcome information were using BlackBerries to scan pre-printed IDs before handing out a badge holder.

No company has had a broader impact on show exhibitors than Apple, of course, since first the iPhone and then the iPad disrupted the market. And its influence was widely felt as attendees roamed the convention center here and meeting rooms in Vegas hotels.

Advertisements on public transportation often featured an iPhone or iPad, though they were being used to sell other products. The convention show floor was littered with cases, power chargers and writing stylus accessories built for Apple’s mobile devices.

A section of the show floor created in a partnership with reviews website, iLounge.com, to showcase the mountain of devices that work with Apple’s products, has grown dramatically over the years. What began as a pitch in 2009 and 4,000 square feet that sold out in a day has grown to 125,000 square feet this year, up half from 2012, and locations in various parts of the show.

“The demand to be in here is incredible,” said Jesse Hollington, an editor at the site, adding that space at the iLounge in next year’s CES is already sold out. “Everything’s iDevices these days.”

There was no shortage of attendees in many sections of the convention center, particularly the huge booths set up by companies like Sony Corp. and LG Electronics Co. Managing the traffic at times was a trial.

The Las Vegas monorail, which shuttles passengers from the convention center to the city’s famous Strip, implemented a strategy to make sure the long lines of CES attendees that would inevitably snake around the stations had a fair shot at getting on the train.

Monorail staffers would strategically lead small groups of passengers through the pay gates and down to a specific area on the platform. When the train, packed with people, arrived, the one car near the group of people would arrive empty, allowing them to board without elbowing other passengers.

But there was other grumbling that the show had not recovered to the levels of dynamism and free spending that marked the years before the recession that hit in late 2008.

One taxi driver said back then, he would be hired to shuttle CES attendees to many gentlemen’s clubs during some evenings, he said. Some nights it was as many as a dozen; these days, it’s closer to two or three, he said.